Unbiased Opinion-Review

I recently rented Judges, and as I had no expectations, I was somewhat pleased. I liked the story, and the comic book aspect of it. Although I am in no way a fan of Quentin Tarantino, the movie felt a bit like a fairly low-scale version of a "Desperado-esque," film. I agree that some of the acting was not all that great, but low-budget films acn't afford Costner, or Gibson, plus there are thousands of talented people out there who need a break, that could become the next great film stars, and indie films are those chances. I have never seen DJ Perry in anything else, & have no idea who he is, but I thought he was okay, not great, but okay. Most of the other main actors were about the same. The Iron-joe character was a bit too east-coast hood in his accent, but the character itself was good. The barber was good, but it seemed that they couldn't decide to make him comically menacing, evil, stupid, or what. I personally would have liked to see him as more of a sadisticly evil character, with a more serious menace to him, but that's just me. The lighting and framing were very good, and shots did not appear forced. The music was a nice touch to many scenes, although the drastic fades in & out for dialogue, became quite frustrating at times. I also enjoyed the character of Danny Strong, obviosuly based on Samson from the Bible. I liked how his character even fought off the Barber's men with a Donkey jawbone, however I felt like it was a throw-aside storyline which could have been either focused on more on dropped, as I was expecting it to draw more to the story itself. A few lines were really well written and delivered, as well as some that were not. (Barber licking his blood off Iron-Joe's knife and saying, "It tastes like chicken.") This is an example of the confusion for the direction of the Barber character. The Sonny character, much like the barber, needed to be more of an evil character, or somewhere along the lines of the smart-a$$ witty bad guy, for this to work, again he was caught between two types of characters. Fight scenes were short and not very eventful, but did not detract from the film. For the most part, the editing was well done, I liked the opeing title effects, and the DVD authoring/Design was very well done, definitely better than many major motion picture DVD releases. All in all I would say this is a great Indie Low-budget film, and contrary to other posts, the filmmakers have the right vision, and should be encouraged in their pursuits, instead of bashed for no apparent reason. I wish them luck, and hope that Judges 2 will heed advice the filmmakers have received, and grow from what they learned in Judges, to make better films, and reach their goals of future filmmaking.